


Escape

by anonymousAlchemist, marywhale



Series: STARBLASTER MISSION LOGS [1]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe - Science Fiction, Alternate Universe - Space, Gen, what if taz... but sci-fi?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-22
Updated: 2018-02-07
Packaged: 2019-03-07 23:19:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 17,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13445532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anonymousAlchemist/pseuds/anonymousAlchemist, https://archiveofourown.org/users/marywhale/pseuds/marywhale
Summary: The recently formed alliance between four space-faring civilizations has culminated in the InterPlanetary Research Expedition and the launch of the Starblaster—the first exploratory ship of its kind, setting out on a mission to prove that the four worlds of The Alliance can coexist together and that true harmony is possible between their species.If the I.P.R.E succeeds, it will be a milestone in racial harmony, a historic event.Never mind that everyone expects it to fail.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> marywhale: Okay, TAZ... but science fiction.  
> anonymousalchemist: FUCK

The InterPlanetary Alliance Station hangs above Bisolis, a spiral of titanium-poly-lucianite. It is an elegant set of silver rings slowly rotating in space, a marvel of both practical and artistic design. The architect is Elvish, you see, and Elvish engineering is always aesthetic.

Ships dart between the loops like mayflies, like minnows, like titanium-polyelucianite alloy, grossly expensive scientific and military vessels from four different planets, all competing with one another to build the biggest, baddest spaceship. 

A galactic genitalia measuring contest, of a sort. 

The starships dock, loaded with goods and people, with information to sensitive to be broadcast by ansible. Then the ships speed away — to Faerun, to the colonies, to the stations peppered across the spiral arms of the Planar Galaxy. The ships equipped with warp cores fly free from the tug of the planet’s gravity well and then leave ghostly afterimages as they tesser to the farthest reaches of the Alliance.

The ship docked at Ring B, Quadrant 1 does not move. It has never flown outside the orbit of Bisolis, aside from its test flights it’s never flown at all. It was constructed in the planet’s shipyards and then docked at Bisolis Starport. Yet despite its small size, the ship is, arguably, the winner of the previously alluded dick measuring contest. Its curves are elegant. Its lines are sleek. The ship looks nothing like any of the other starships docked at the station, alien to all races. 

The Starblaster is, according to its captain, “a phenomenal example of interplanetary cooperation,” and “one sexy starship,” to which the ship’s new navigator replied “sounds like you wanna fuck it,” and then proceeded to high five their new gunner. 

“I don’t want to fuck it,” the captain said. His first mistake. 

“Ch’yeah you do,” their gunner said. “You wouldn’t be denyin’ it if you didn’t.” 

The gunner is a hypocrite. Standing at her station on the bridge, she runs her fingers across the buttons and levers. The firepower of a small nation is at her fingertips. She’s trained for this, but there is something thrilling about being on the bridge of a newly christened starship. It’s enthralling. They only just cut the red tape in a ceremony televised across a hundred planets, and everything still smells like plasma and plastic. 

She is the second elf to serve on a mixed-race crew. The first is her brother, who pressed “accept” an entire three seconds before she did when they received their joint offer. He sits across the bridge at his station, in front of holographic charts whirled with stars and sectioned into quadrants. The navigator is responsible for the slicing of the universe into tesserable chunks. He’s currently waving his palm through the holographic display and pretending to cut his homeworld in half with his fingers, apparently _very_ satisfied with the high-tech equipment and petty game.

He’s startled by the head of security jumping behind him. The navigator whips around, non-regulation ponytail thwapping the security officer in the face. The security officer laughs and the navigator says “Stop being such a fuckin’ weirdo,” without any heat. 

“This, coming from you?” the security officer says. The navigator snorts.

The comms officer — also the ship’s second in command — calls across the bridge for them to “knock it off boys, we’re launching in five,” before turning back to her microphone, swapping codes with station control, getting approval for takeoff from the IPAS technicians. She’s talking to three people at once, through three different comms mics, occasionally lifting her head to relay information to the rest of the bridge crew. 

The captain, in the command chair, nods and tells the navigator and the security officer that “this is getting broadcast live, guys, we need to keep our image professional,” and the two of them apologize sheepishly. The captain waves them off. He was also young once. He’s still young, despite his decorated career. The brass call him reckless, arrogant, overconfident. 

He is always described with the adjectives they give the ambitious. 

As well he should be. The captain has put together the first joint mission that the InterPlanetary Alliance has seen. If the InterPlanetary Research Expedition succeeds, it will be a milestone in racial harmony, a historic event. 

Never mind that everyone expects it to fail. That the elves gave them their rejects, that the humans gave them some of their youngest officers, that the medic is the only dwarf on the ship. Never mind that it’s a skeleton crew, a small ship, a test with all eyes watching. Never mind that the captain can see the shape of the alliance fragmenting if the mission fails. He puts such thoughts from his mind. He knows that this is the right crew for the mission. Speaking of his crew — he presses the intercom button. “All crew to the bridge,” he says.  

A human man wearing non-regulation jeans comes running onto the bridge. “What’s up?” he asks, panting. “Ran here from engineering, are, uh, are we good? Anything broken?” 

He’s been fixing things all morning – last minute touches before launch. He knows that this ship is a marvel of engineering. He knows that marvels have a tendency to break. He rubs his glasses on his red regulation jacket. 

“We’re fine, babe,” the gunner calls. “Cap just wants everyone to see takeoff.” 

“Gotcha,” the man says, and takes his seat in the back of the bridge. His station and the medic’s stations are more formality than anything. The engineer’s real work is done down by the engines and warp core.  

Last in is the medic, waddling leisurely. This isn’t his first rodeo. He raises a hand in greeting to the rest of the crew. The captain nods back. “Everything fine in the medbay?” 

The medic nods. “Got our last shipment of nanites late, but everything’s squared away. How long ‘til launch?” 

“You’re just in time,” the captain says. He takes the helm. 

Before he was a captain, he was a pilot. He curves his fingers around the wheel. He feels like he ought to say something — he keeps forgetting that not all races are telepathic. This is the inaugural mission of the P.A.S. STARBLASTER, the first starship to be crewed by a multiracial crew and fitted with the best tech from four different worlds — A Gnomish telemethic matter-entanglement engine, an Elvish polylucianite hull, a Human Mark XI Warp Core, and a Dwarven communications relay that will work from inside a black hole. Their mission is to explore new worlds, conduct research, and report back to the Alliance with new information for the advancement of all races. Their mission is also to test-drive the first starship created using The InterPlanetary Research Expedition, approved on a trial basis. 

Curling anticipation in his stomach. He can see the dark expanse of space ahead of him on the display port. 

“Gentlebeings,” he says. “It is an honor to serve with you all on the Starblaster. Connect us to station for countdown.” 

The comms officer nods and patches the station through. The comms technician on the station starts synchronizing their countdown 

“10...9...8….” 

The crew strap themselves into their seats. The navigator and the gunner exchange delighted grins. The engineer closes his eyes and holds the arms of his chair tightly. 

“7...6...5…” 

The medic yawns. The security officer taps his feet and stares raptly at the display. The comms officer bites her lip. 

“3...2...1…” 

The captain grins. He whispers to himself, to his ship.

“Now. _Let’s dance._ ” 

#

Some elven blowhard is jabbering and Taako is _so_ not here for it. 

The dingus is in dress blues. He’s got a chest full of candy and a head full of empty, and Taako’s tired of standing there listening to the guy drone on when there’s a whole table full of goodies and an open bar across the dance floor that he’s making a beeline for ay-sap. Or he would, except that it wouldn’t be _proper._ He wishes he could go back to his and Lup’s suite, but he can’t leave, ‘cause they’ve promised to be good little elf children and not make a scene. 

Which is a pity, because Taako’s dress is getting kind of uncomfortable. It’s worth it for the visuals but its scratching his stomach and he kind of wants to take it off. 

It’s an excellent outfit, scratchiness aside. Taako’s in a floor-length evening gown, all silk and silver sparkles, open across the back. It’s accented with sleeves made out of a fabric so thin as to be translucent. His hair is loose and curled, his ears glitter with holographic gemstones projected from a single steel piercing. His own invention. No heels, though. He’s gonna be standing all night and if cha’boy’s anything, cha’boy is practical. Cha’boy holo-ed his flats to _look_ like heels instead. 

Lup didn’t bother with holo-tech. She’s just wearing shiny leather dress shoes along with a beautifully cut suit, a gunmetal grey that brings out her eyes. Its paired with a black shirt and onyx cufflinks. Her hair is freshly dyed for the occasion — red ombre at the tips.

If looks could kill, everyone around them would be dead before they hit the ground, Taako thinks smugly. They’re pretty as _fuck._ They look like they’re debuting the next Rày runway collection, they look like they’re holonet stars at a photoshoot, they look like they’re hotshot space jockeys here to cut the dance floor like a starship right ‘cross the galaxy. Which is exactly who they are. 

The rest of the elven contingent has been giving them death glares since the two of them walked in. 

Lup is supposed to be wearing the dress. Taako is supposed to be wearing the suit. 

Their clothes had been delivered two hours before the party by one of the elven emissaries to Bisolis, a low-level ambassador who had rapped twice on the door to their suite and then let himself in, nevermind that Taako could have been _naked_ , nah, no respect for their two prestigious mission picks here.  

“Dress nicely,” the guy said. Taako had sneered, snatched the bag out of his hand, and closed the door in his face without a word. 

He’s used to condescension. That doesn’t mean that he has to like it. Sure, _of course,_ because him and Lup were merit-students to the Academy, because he’s worked kitchens to put himself through school, because Lup worked as a bartender, that means that they can’t dress themselves, right? That means that everyone and their mother — the ambassadors, the aides who subtly sneer at the aliens — can treat them like they don’t belong. Of course that means they don’t know how to comport themselves themselves among the interplanetary elite, that they don’t know how to mind their manners in polite company. Getting chosen for the mission is as much a subtle rejection as it is a promotion. “Here, you don’t fit in, maybe some other race will take you.” 

Fuck them. Breaking dress code? That’s _deliberate._

And the rest of the elves can’t even get mad at them, because Taako and Lup just look that good, and because it wouldn’t do to show a lack of support for their two chosen candidates. It’s nice being someone, Taako thinks. Too bad it comes with so many dumb social things.He’s supposed to be on his _best behavior_ , and he can’t even do anything fun because it’s their _jobs_ on the line, and Lup’s desperate to get off their miserable planet, and like hell is he going to ruin this for her. 

Taako yawns and leans his head on Lup’s shoulder. Skin contact between his ear and her neck – he transfers the image of a ticking clock, the feeling of boredom, vague questioning. She nudges him off, swings an arm around his bare shoulders, transferring discontent, a shrugging, a vague curiosity why-don’t-you-ask?, Captain Davenport’s face. The nonverbal exchange doesn’t take more than a few seconds to complete. 

Elven touch-telepathy can’t transfer language but over the years Taako and Lup have refined their mental communication to an art. 

“Only if you come with me,” Taako says. Lup removes her arm and grabs Taako’s hand, transferring _assent_ , and pulls him through the swarms of people. 

The other elves are too surprised to stop them from leaving. They don’t seem to have noticed the exchange happening. For most elves, touch-telepathy is reserved for formal discussions, a formality used for criminal trials, for the swearing-in of judges. There’s no lying through touch-telepathy, all emotions are bared. 

Taako and Lup “talk” as they skirt the edges of the crowd, sending brief snatches of images and emotion through their clasped palms. Amusement at how the other guests look, curiosity about the rest of their crew —  Magnus sneaking hors d'oeuvres from the refreshments table, Lucretia in the corner unabashedly reading a book, Merle winking at the two of them, exasperation at the stupidity of trying to find a gnome in a mixed-race crowd. 

Lup registers surprise, prompting Taako to turn his head. Oh, there’s the captain, red hair like a little flame. Lup snorts when he sends that mental picture to her, and they walk over to him in tandem. He looks — and smiles — up when he sees them. Taako grins back down. He likes the captain, he’s one of the few gnomes that Taako knows.The guy seems real genuine, unlike most of the people who talk about the mission. Good thing, cause he’s the one in charge of this whole deal. 

“So when’re we allowed to blow this joint?” Taako asks. 

“Well you could leave now, if you like. This isn’t mandatory,” Captain Davenport says, shrugging. 

“Mandatory, or _mandatory,_ ” Lup asks. 

Davenport wiggles his hand, grimacing slightly. “You’ve shown your faces, as long as your commanding officer is alright with it, leaving will be fine.” 

“You’re our commanding officer,” Lup says. 

“Technically not until we get on board the ship,” Davenport responds. 

“ _Technically,_ ” Taako says. “Good ‘nough for cha’boy. Can we be excused, we’re _literally_ dying here.” Davenport rolls his eyes, but Taako can tell he’s amused.  “Only if you take me with you.” 

“Done!” Lup says, clapping her hands together. “You’re being kidnapped, Cap, we’re gonna round up the rest of the crew and have an _afterparty_.” 

“Wait, wha-?” Taako says. Lup brushes their hands together, sending the sensation of curiosity, images of the other crew members, the sight of a single ship floating in space alone, surrounded by the black. 

Aw, Lulu wants to make friends. 

Taako sends back shrugging assent. “Yeah Cap, we’re grabbin’ the others and we’re getting out of here, and you can’t stop us, nuh-uh.” 

“I wasn’t going to,” Davenport says, giving the rest of the party the barest hint of a sour glance, and Taako realizes that maybe it isn’t just him and Lup who have problems with the brass. 

It’s shaping up to be a surprising, maybe even not terrible, night. He grins at their captain. “Fuckin’ excellent.” 

#

Lup loosens her silver tie as she walks into the suite she and Taako are sharing, sighing in relief. They’re like a noose to the neck, except socially mandated. She’d looked _sharp_ , though. The rest of the elves can’t say anything about her and Taako now playing their part. She tosses the scrap of fabric on the couch. 

“Sit wherever you like, babes,” she says to the rest of the crew, waving a languid hand. “We got, well, we stole a buncha food from the reception and we got nicked champagne, and hm, Mags, you want to go onna booze run?” 

“Yeah,” Magnus says from where he’s standing next to the doorway. He’s so cute, Lup thinks. Six point five feet of alien beefcake, nodding like a kid. 

“Aight, big boy, let’s get rollin’,” she says, motioning for him to follow her, shrugging off her jacket and tossing it next to the tie. Magnus obliges, shrugging off his jacket — crisp and official IPA red — as well. His shirt under it doesn’t have sleeves, which she’s pretty sure isn’t regulation. 

“Wait, hold up,” Taako says, grabbing Lup’s wrist. “What’m I supposed to do?” 

He transmits vague panic, meaning “don’t leave me here alone with these _strangers_ ,” and she rolls her eyes. He’ll be fine. He’s just being a baby. Taako’s a social butterfly once you get him going. He was the one with all the underclassmen hanging on after his weird “advice.” 

“Get the food out, pop some champagne, make sure no one comes and sees what’s up,” she says. “You’ve got this. We’ll be back in thirty!” 

She pats his cheek semi-condescendingly and transmits a little bit of reassurance. He sticks his tongue out at her, and transmits acquiescence before turning back to the rest of their guests idling in the small sitting room they’ve been provided with. It’s a nice room, actually, Lup thinks. She’s being uncharitable. It’s nicer than their apartment back on Sylvan, in New Elfington.

Lup and Magnus walk out of the ensuite, into the corridors of the IPA residential compound. They’re all holed up in IPA digs until they ship out to the station — courtesy of their respective governments. Lup’s not sure where the closest liquor depot is, and she glances at Magnus as they walk out of the lobby of the compound. Cool night air, a little damp. The compound is brightly lit, even outside. There’s a garage nearby where their vehicles are parked at. It’s a nice walk over.

“Y’know where we’re goin’, Maggie?” 

“Yeah — there’s a place a couple of klicks away,” he says. “Maggie?” 

“It suits you,” she says, steering them to the garage. “Right, since you know where we’re goin’, you’re driving.” 

He chuckles. “I can do that.I brought my ID and everything,” Magnus says. She squints at him. Hm, square jaw, stubble, sideburns, fresh baby face underneath.

“How old are you, anyway? Hundo-ten, hundo-twenty? You look like a kid.” 

“I’m twenty-two,” he says, startling, fumbling with the keys. 

“Hachi machi, _twenty-two,_ ” she exclaims. “Gods, you’re a _baby_. Me and ‘Ko are a hundred and seven.” 

“No kidding?” Magnus says, “Aliens are _weird_.” He gets into the driver’s seat, and Lup follows into the passenger’s. The car’s a rental, helpfully provided by the IPA. 

“Don’t need to tell me, babe,” she says. “Gonna be an interesting two months, huh?” 

“I think it’ll be fun,” Magnus says, starting the engine. 

“Me too,” Lup says, and gives him a wide, gap-toothed smile. He beams back, and then turns his eyes back to the road. She thinks she’s going to like him. 

They return to the suite bearing gifts of liquor — Draconic firebrandy, ferociously peppery and Lup’s spirit of choice — and Redcheek cider — Magnus’s pick, Lup’s never had it. No noise emanates from the closed door, but as soon as the door opens, there’s a riot of chattering, her brother’s voice and the new engineer’s rising up from where they’re sitting on the floor in excited bursts, punctuated by commentary from the captain, the comms officer, and the medic who are also sprawled across the floor. Plates of stolen food sit around them, alongside open bottles of pilfered champagne and mugs. Her brother looks up at her. He’s grinning. 

“Lulu, check this out!” Taako says. The sleeves of his dress are rolled up, and he’s elbows deep in a holomatter projector, programmed to display a decorative silver sculptures It’s making a weird clicking noise, but the holograms are _moving,_ and that’s something she’s never seen before. She scrambles to her knees and touches the moving holomatter,  little silver mannequin walking delicately across the floor. 

“How’d you do that?”  

“It was all Bluejean’s idea,” Taako says, gesturing dramatically at Barry, who blushes. “Boy’s a _genius_ , they’d go _nuts_ over this at the Academy.” 

“It was nothing,” Barry says, waving a hand sheepishly. “No offense, but we’ve, uh, had movable holographic tech for _years_ — no holomatter, though. That stuff’s absolutely fascinating — I’ve been wanting to get my hands on an elven projector for years.” 

“We’ve had that for centuries,” Lup says absently, letting the little sculpture walk into her palm and back off. There’s no moving holomatter on Sylvan. “Those ain’t nothing. I can’t believe this only took you half an hour.”

“ _This_ is why I wanted this mission,” Davenport says, motioning for her to hand the holomatter sculpture over to him. She does, transferring the mannequin to his cupped palms. “The IPA _says_ its diverse, but that’s all public relations, there’s no actual discussion of ideas, no _synthesis._ We’ve supposedly got the best of four different worlds supposedly working together, and it’s been _ten years_ since the alliance was made and any sort of collaboration still requires at _least_ six meetings before approval.” 

“I didn’t know you were so passionate about this, Captain,” Lucretia says, holding her hand out for the mannequin. Davenport grins ruefully and passes it to her. 

“Do you know how much _bureaucracy_ I had to wade through to get this mission approved? Because it was, as I might colloquially say it, a _metric shit ton_.” 

Merle laughs. “Surprised it wasn’t more, Drew. Shoulda seen what I had to fill out way back when.” 

“Yeah, but that’s cause you’re _ancient_ ,” Taako says, still fiddling with the holomatter projector. Merle throws a bottle cap at him. “Ow!” 

“Respect your elders, kiddo,” Merle says. 

“Respect my _face,_ ” Taako says. 

Lup laughs, and opens the bottle of firebrandy to pass around. They’re going to be just fine. 

Normally, she’d be more talkative, but there’s so much to look at. Three entire humans, a gnome, a dwarf, and her brother, all sitting around a holomatter projector. It’s like the setup for a bad joke. She hadn’t expected the aliens to look, well, so _alien._

She’s never been so close to so many offworlders before. Not in casual capacity. Oh sure, her and Taako have been in integrated classes, and the upper-level officials of the InterPlanetary Alliance, both military and civilian, are from all four core worlds. That doesn’t mean that she hangs out with a lot of aliens. 

In Elvish, the word for “alien” is “one-not-of-us,” or “one-not-to-be-trusted.”  The two terms are synonyms. 

Elves tend to be... insular. When the Elvish government had declared that Sylvan would be joining the currently-forming IPA, she remembers being surprised. Her and Taako were just kids, barely fifty, and they had seen it on the holonet. The next day she changed her edutrack concentration to Extraplanetary Negotiations: aka, dealing with aliens. 

Because here’s the thing. If Sylvan was joining the Alliance, then her and Taako could get off-world, without being an “ambassador,” which _everyone_ knew was a position saved for the rich kids, the politically elite’s little princes and princesses. If Sylvan joined the Alliance, Lup and Taako could get out from under the Academy’s thumb.

They could do what they wanted. See what they wanted. Be who they wanted. 

Some of Lup’s forms for the Academy still say “He.” The InterPlanetary Alliance paperwork got changed within a _day._ It’s things like that, she thinks. Things like, nobody looks at her and Taako as if they’re _wrong_ , here. Nobody looks at them like a holomatter glitch or a charity case. 

There’s an old Terran movie that she watched with Taako at a IPA movie night during orientation that used the phrase “infinite diversity in infinite combinations.” She likes that. 

“Hey, uh, Lup?” The engine—Barry’s voice breaks her out of her musing. He’s holding up a hand of cards, kind of hesitant. She recognizes them as ones Taako brought with him. “D’you wanna play?” 

She blinks. The rest of the crew has hands of cards. The holomatter projector has been pushed to the side. Magnus and Taako are in some sort of discussion that is apparently interesting enough to make Taako’s ears flick. Lucretia is frowning at her hand and rearranging his cards. Davenport and Merle are gesturing to something on a tablet, both their hands of cards visible. 

Lup sits down and makes grabby hands for the cards. Barry gives them to her. 

#

Merle walks barefoot outside the shuttle terminal, letting the grass brush the soles of his feet, feeling the sun-warmed earth beneath them. This close to the terminal no one bothers manicuring the lawn, so it’s all native plantlife, thick-stemmed and hearty. Merle’s never understood why Terrans and Elves like their tame lawns so much. Dwarves don’t beat their world into submission the same way, not when it’s so easy to coax the right plants to grow in the right places. Maybe that’s what you get for being descended from fauna—shitty landscaping.

It’s loud out in the fields beside the launchpads, and Merle’s running late, but this is going to be his last day planetside for a while so he’s going to soak it up and curl his toes in the dirt while he still can. If he turns his back to the station and squints, tries not to breathe the native atmosphere in too deep, he can almost imagine he’s back home on Yggdra and not on Bisolis.

The communicator on his hips crackles to life with Drew’s exasperated voice. “Merle, I can see you out there in that field. The shuttle is taking off in fifteen minutes and our engineer is having a panic attack.”

Merle turns towards the launchpad and grins, picking up the communicator.  He waves. “What do you want me to do about that from here, Drew?”

“Merle.”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m on my way.” Merle grabs his boots from the ground beside him and heads back across the tarmac, towards the shuttle. It’s a sturdy old thing, Terran in design, not like the sleek new starship that’ll carry them off to explore new planets.

Merle’s only got asphalt under his feet now, but he still takes the time to enjoy it. His home’s going to be all hollow metallic nothing for the next little while. No dirt, nothing growing. Soaking up sunlight that doesn’t come from a lamp is a luxury. Still, first dwarf on a mixed-race crew — hell of a coup for an old fella like him.

Davenport and Lucretia are standing by the open shuttle door, flanking Barry, who’s breathing fast and heavy, bracing himself on Davenport’s shoulder. Drew spots Merle and visibly relaxes. “Good of you to join us, Merle.”

“Merle’s here, Barry,” Lucretia says. “You’ll be fine.”

Merle’s been brushing up on his interspecies medicine, but there’s never really been a _call_ for it before — no need for one medical office to cover four species. He’s the only dwarf on the mission, so fat lot of good his skills are going to do, but no way Merle was going to turn down the job once he was offered it. He’s got a bunch of textbooks loaded up on his tablet, but if he’s going to stop a human from having a full blown panic attack, pulling out an instruction manual in front of him probably isn’t the best option.

He squints at Barry, racking his brain for _some_ sort of human medical knowledge. Only one thing comes to mind. “Tilt your head forward,” he says. “Pinch the soft bit of your nose closed for me and then you’re going to stay like that for ten minutes.”

Drew clears his throat and gives his wrist comm a pointed look.

“You know what?” Merle says. “Let’s get you sat down and strapped in first.”

Drew’s first officer looks distinctly skeptical, but Merle just smiles at her as he leads Barry into the shuttle. He pushes Barry into the first available seat — next to a bunch of young recruits headed up to the station to start their rotation working on the station. It’s a terran kid, of course. The ranks have segregated themselves by race even for this short jaunt up. Drew’s mixed crew might get a lot of shiny PR, but it hasn’t made waves in the ranks of The Alliance yet. 

Barry looks like he might actually be calming down. Merle’s got this. “There we go,” he says, after awkwardly strapping Barry into his seat. “You just sit here next to—kid, what’s your name?”

The kid looks up, all regulation haircut and uniform and terran surprise that he’s being addressed by a Dwarf. “I’m Ensign Rosso, sir.”

Merle nods and gives Barry’s knee a pat. “You sit here next to Ensign Rosso. Pinch your nose like I told you. Keep breathing. You’re _fine_.”

Barry does as he’s told, breathing in through his mouth, and glances up at Merle. “Are you… this is how you treat a nosebleed,” he says, frowning.

Merle’s never experienced spontaneous bleeding from his face before, so the fact that it happened to terrans had stuck in his mind. It sounded like the kind of thing you’d panic about. Blood, overall, seems messy. Merle’ll do his best to keep it inside everyone. “How you feeling, Bluejeans?”

There’s a pause. Barry’s frown deepens and he keeps pinching his nose. “Better.”

“See?” Merle pats Barry’s shoulder and then climbs up into the seat next to him. “I know what I’m doing.”

He doesn’t, but neither would anyone else in his position. There’s no one, not on on any of the four Alliance worlds, who’s qualified for this job. Merle’s going to muddle through. He’s getting up there in age and when the call went out for candidates to join up and crew the first mixed-race vessel at the IPRE, Merle had seized his opportunity. Not many medics would sign up for a job with such a high probability of failure. Not many dwarves would volunteer to leave their established homes to travel on a ship carved out of metal and  poly-lucianite with no garden aboard. Merle’s not the average dwarf, and he likes Drew, so here he is—strapping in for one last hurrah before retirement, ready to make this work.

#

The InterPlanetary Alliance Station is elvish in design, which means it looks more like art than what Magnus thinks a real space station should look like, but he grew up on Earth, watching old sci-fi movies on his family’s rickety holovid projector — his mental image of life in space is all round white hallways, blue lighting, and lens flare. The reality of IPAS is kind of boring, in comparison. It’s pretty, obviously — the Elves don’t really do _not_ pretty — but there are safety signs everywhere in a bunch of different languages and his temporary living quarters are so small Magnus can’t fully stretch out his arms inside it.

Which, you know, is fine, because tomorrow they leave for _space._ And today he’s going on a spacewalk.

Space is — to quote one of his favourite old series — the final frontier. There’s lots of it and yeah, sure, humanity’s late to the space party, but they’re here now and Magnus has been dreaming about going out and exploring the vastness of the universe since he was a kid. It’s just… _cool_.

All the space ambassadors made it clear that the mission is about diplomacy. It’s about making friends with aliens while they show off their cool new ship and tech. Magnus is good with that. Lup’s cool, which is great because he’s on security and she’s the gunner, so they’re going to be working together a lot. Her brother seems okay too, and if he’s anything like Lup, they’ll get along great. Magnus doesn’t really _know_ Merle the medic that well, but he seems laidback and maybe like he’ll have the _good stuff_ on board, but he’s also a Dwarf and Magnus isn’t sure how that works, really. Like if plant-people eat plants and stuff too, or if that would be weird for them. It seems like it would be a rude thing to ask, but also if Magnus was going to ask anyone about it, it would probably be Merle.

Maybe Lucretia. Lucretia seems like she would know. Barry too, maybe, except Barry seems more interested in ships than people.

Magnus can get behind the ship thing. Magnus has only been onboard The Starblaster once, for his security inspection that morning — if you didn’t count holo-generated walkthroughs and training sessions, and he doesn’t — but he’s already in love. The Starblaster is small and sleek and sexy as _fuck_. The kind of ship he’d have had up on his wall if they’d sold posters of it when he was little. He bets they’re going to sell posters of it now, and some little human kid is gonna put it on their wall with stars in their eyes. 

He can’t help grinning as checks the seal on his helmet to make sure his new red spacesuit isn’t about to leak his air out into the nothingness of space and steps the airlock. He’s doing his best not to bounce in place because he is a _professional_ on his final security walkaround.

A _space_ walkaround.

His comms flicker to life and his helmet fills with the sound of Captain Davenport’s voice. “Magnus, oxygen levels at full. All systems green. You’re good to go.” A pause. “Please don’t forget to tether yourself to the station.”

Magnus can’t help laughing, even though he knows the Captain is genuinely concerned. “I’ve got it. Don’t worry, I remember protocol, Cap.”

Magnus is the first person in his family to get off planet, and now he’s one of the first humans to ever be part of a mixed-race crew. His experience up here is limited and apparently he’s the youngest person to be recruited for the IPRE — he’d been _sure_ the twins were younger, but Elven ages are weird — so he’s got a lot to prove. He should definitely be acting professional. He’s not supposed to act like a kid on Candlenights, except he’s only done a handful of spacewalks and they’re simultaneously the most terrifying and amazing thing in the world.

Magnus takes a deep breath, hooks his tether to the inside of the airlock, then carefully, methodically, turns the mechanical locks that allow him to crank a handle and open the door.

Gravity falls away. Magnus is left suspended in the air, thousands of kilometres above Bisolis, weightless and insignificant in the face of the vast expanse of the universe.

Laughter bubbles up out of him before he can press it down. Magnus shifts his tether to a rail going up the side of the station before unhooking himself from the one in the airlock and pushing upwards — _gently_ so he doesn’t shoot up like a bullet, you only make that mistake once — as he moves out, into space.

“I take it you’ve successfully exited the airlock?” Davenport says, voice dry. Magnus likes his captain. He’s excited about space too, excited about their mission, not like the bureaucrats who treat exploration like a necessary evil.

“Yeah, sorry,” Magnus says. “I’m out. Moving towards the ship. Looks good so far.”

The Starblaster is above him, all shiny and new, connected to IPAS via a retractable bridge. It’s reminiscent of Magnus’s favourite old sci-fi films, filled with loads of alien tech that Magnus doesn’t understand. That’s okay, though, because the tech isn’t his job. _His_ job is keeping people safe, and keeping people safe means inspecting the ship from toe to tip before they take off.

When he gets close enough, Magnus reaches up to run a hand over the exterior of the ship. Space — and zero g — is weird. The first time he tried it, in training, his body had freaked out, his senses taking over and telling him he was _falling_ , not floating, and he’d flailed around trying to regain control he hadn’t really lost, but _now_ … well, Magnus has always picked stuff up real quick. And being weightless and _in space_ is like being part of the best extreme sport ever played, better than _rebound_.

“Under the ship,” he says. “No visible debris or damage. Nothing looks out of place.”

The inspection is mostly a formality. The vast political machine that is the InterPlanetary Alliance has put their full weight behind the IPRE. The mission falling apart because something went wrong with the first and only ship to combine technology from all four of their worlds would be a political nightmare. Magnus is pretty sure the brass is nervous about letting _him_ near it before the launch and he’s part of the crew.

He lets himself float along the underbelly of the ship. He can see a faint reflection of himself on its insulated, heat-resistant surface tiles and it’s just so _cool_. Going on a beer run with aliens before heading up to a space station to be launched on an exploratory and diplomatic mission is the kind of thing he dreamed of as a kid, and now it’s real. He’s got a crew he, okay, doesn’t know _that_ well yet, but they seems cool, and he’s got a job as their protector — he’s no expert, but he’s _pretty_ sure humans bounce back from taking a big hit faster than everyone else, especially enhanced with Dwarven nanite tech.

The tether connecting him to the station reaches its limit and tugs gently at Magnus’s waist, bouncing him backwards. He reaches up, grabbing the side of the spaceship before he can float off and has to reel himself in.

“Bottom and wings of ship clear,” he says. “Moving to check out the rest of the ship. I don’t think we’ll have any problems.”

“Let’s not push our luck,” Davenport says, but he sounds amused.

Magnus heads up to look over the top of the ship too, everything seems fine. It’s shiny and new and his home for the next few months. Small, but his cabin in the models was bigger than the closet they’ve got him sleeping in tonight, and it’s _freedom_. Maybe he’ll be the youngest person on the tiny ship and maybe they’ve got all eyes on them right now, but they’re going to head out to the stars and Magnus Burnsides, genuine Earthling, can’t think of anywhere else in the universe he’d rather be.

When the inspection is complete, he’s still got a good fifteen minutes of air left in his suit. “All clear,” he says. “I’m going to do a final circle and head back in. We’re ready for tomorrow.”

“Good to hear. I’m going to pass you to IPAS control,” Davenport says. “I’ll see you at the briefing this afternoon, Magnus. Don’t be late.”

You get delayed once petting a cute dog and you never hear the end of it. “Confirmed. I’ll be there on time, Cap,” he says, and switches off broadcasting on his mic.

Magnus pushes off from the ship’s roof, so he can float free of it and away from the station, letting himself drift out to the end of his tether. Bisolis turns slowly beneath him and Magnus looks down at the planet’s surface, all blue water and lush yellow and red plantlife, clouds swirling across the sky and blocking out the exact shape of continents he’s forgotten the name of. It feels like his moment. Like _the_ moment, in the movie of his life fifteen minutes in, where everything starts to change. The start of his great adventure.

He grins again, wider this time, since there’s no one watching him out here. “Hell yeah,” he says, quiet, just for him. “Magnus Burnsides, spaceman.”

#

When Lucretia was a teenager, she used to babysit the neighbourhood kids. Maybe Davenport sensed that in her when picked her, out of all the candidate who applied to be his second in command, because you don’t spend four years wrangling six kids ages three-to-seven without learning how to shut down trouble before it starts. Her philosophy then had always been that there was no such thing as a bad child and that’s the attitude she tries to bring to every team meeting, every training session with her new crew — they’re not bad; their behaviour is just… unexpected. She’s been on teams before. This crew is full of characters. 

It helps that Lucretia’s second in command, not first, and that Davenport’s somehow managed to get even grudging respect from the twins, because she still feels like she's getting her feet under her. She feels like she's too young and too quiet and under-qualified. She smothers every single one of those worries with the clean lines of her uniform and the stripes on its arms that denote her rank. She _is_ in control of this situation. She _is_ qualified. She will not look visibly terrified by the weight of the mission being laid upon their shoulders.

Lucretia is, adjusting for lifespan and cultural norms among races, the youngest second-in-command of any vessel in the Alliance. She speaks six alien languages, has an exemplary record on all her previous expeditions, and, at twenty-six, has a _strong_ desire to not wang this up. It’s both the biggest opportunity and challenge she’s ever had. Captain Davenport is counting on her to keep it together and help him maintain control of a crew that is… best and most generously described as ragtag, although the InterPlanetary Alliance PR team is doing their best to build them up. On paper, they all look stellar. It’s when you read between the lines that the cracks begin to show. 

Lucretia and Davenport are probably the only ones who actually read all the notes from Alliance PR. They weren’t fans of Lucretia reading at the party, but they’re not fans of Lucretia in general. She’s young, but not the right _kind_ of young. Too serious to sell to the human crowd. Too _human_ to sell to anyone else.

She kind of understands Barry’s panic attack on the tarmac. It’s a lot of responsibility. Three humans, trying to prove to the whole InterPlanetary Alliance that their race is worth working with. It’s a mission that cannot afford to fail. If it came with a little less bureaucratic posturing and a little more _purpose_ , it would be the perfect job.

Lucretia takes three deep breaths outside the briefing room, mentally preparing herself for the semi-organized chaos that is their crew, and presses the button that will open the sliding door. 

After pumping herself up, it's a little disappointing to discover that not only is she the first to arrive, but the group who had the room booked before them has left dirty water glasses on the table and didn’t even bother clearing their meeting notes from the holodisplay.

Lucretia may _feel_ like a babysitter sometimes, but she's nobody's mother or maid. She refuses to tidy up the dirty water glasses scattered over the table. The station is, at least theoretically, staffed by adults.

The door slides open again and Magnus steps inside, smiling when he sees Lucretia. "Team Human, first in!" he says, even though they've talked about why _maybe_ signalling themselves out as a separate team from the rest of the crew isn't the best way to foster good relations across Alliance species. "Man, this place is a mess."

Magnus starts stacking dirty cups and yeah, okay, Lucretia does appreciate that even if the team hasn’t quite come together yet, Davenport seems to have chosen them well.

“Barry’s not here yet,” she says. “He’s one-third of the human squad.”

“Bet he’ll be next though. Barry’s definitely an on-time guy, right? With the glasses and everything.”

Lucretia’s pretty sure that’s Magnus’s way of calling Barry a nerd. She’s mentally debating some kind of reprimand when the door opens again and Magnus visibly wilts when the Captain enters the room. Lucretia straightens her shoulders. “Captain.”

“Lucretia,” Davenport says, nodding to her. “Magnus, good to see you on time. I see we’re missing most of our crew.”

“You know, it’s space,” Magnus says, sticking the dirty cups and the half-empty jug of water on the ledge of the narrow window that grants its occupants a view of Bisolis beneath them. He gestures to the planet. “Easy to get distracted with all this to look at.”

“We’ll be seeing plenty of planets soon,” Davenport says, glancing out the window. “Before you know it, this’ll be old hat.”

Magnus snorts like this is the most ridiculous thing he’s ever heard and _yeah_ , Lucretia can’t help agreeing with him there, even if she’s not vocalizing it. Space is dark and cold and empty and harsh and _beautiful_. It’s an infinite stretch of endless possibility for exploration and discovery, for something new, something no one else has seen or done before and she can’t imagine wanting to be anywhere else but here. 

To be fair, even the captain doesn’t seem like he believes what he’s saying. The satisfaction in his eyes and the hint of a smile playing at the corners of hip lips belies his history as the decorated pilot of countless starship missions.

This mission isn’t ideal — it’s mostly diplomatic, mostly for show, to prove the InterPlanetary Alliance can work — but it’s a start and a stepping stone for something greater. If it succeeds, it’s ground zero for other missions, more important ones. It’s the start of a new chapter in the history of four separate civilizations and who _wouldn’t_ want to be right in the middle of that?

The door opens again and Merle walks in, a tablet in one hand and a ration bar of some kind in the other. “Morning,” he says. “Still waiting on the twins?”

“And Barry,” Magnus says, sounding distinctly disappointed in his fellow human.

Merle sits and sets his bar down on the table. “Twins might be a while. They were having some kind of argument with the vending machines in the station cafeteria.”

Lucretia frowns at that. “How do you fight with a vending machine? They don’t have AI.”

Merle looks up from his tablet and shrugs. “Beats me, but they were doing their best.”

Davenport glances at his wrist comm and  takes a seat at the head of the table, clearing the holodisplay with a flick of his fingers and calling up the schedule for the Starblaster’s launch instead. “We’re not going to get too deep into this before the rest of the team is here, but I’ll go ahead and ask if everyone is prepared for tomorrow.”

“Almost,” Merle says, and taps his tablet, mirroring it to the holodisplay so they can see what’s on his screen — a half-complete checklist of medbay supplies. “They’re still finalizing the medical stuff, but it should be wrapped up by the end of the day.”

“Check in before you turn in tonight to make sure,” Davenport says. “I doubt it would become an actual issue, but if the media discovers one species has more supplies on board than another…”

“Say no more, Cap. You want to avoid a public shitshow,” Merle says, nodding. “I’ll handle it.”

In the Terran Exploration and Defense Fleet, the chain of command is more rigorous and team dynamics more formal than here, but Davenport sat Lucretia down after taking her on to point out that the seven of them were going to be sharing a small ship for — he hoped — a long time. Keeping a strict chain of command would be untenable and absolutely antithetical to the core of their mission — solidifying the Alliance by proving their four worlds are allies in more than just name, that they’re stronger and smarter and faster and _better_ together than they are on their own.

It’s an ideal Lucretia wants to believe in.

“I’m good,” Magnus says. “Did a walkthrough inspection of the ship before the walkaround yesterday. Everything’s looking great.” He grins and glances out the window again. Magnus is kind of like a kid. He _is_ a kid, really — the youngest person on the crew and the one with the least space-side experience. He’s from planetside, a homegrown Earther. “Can I just say? I’m _super_ stoked for take off.”

Davenport laughs. “Just hold on to that excitement for when we’ve all been living on the ship together for a month and the novelty’s gone. This isn’t your typical vessel. Not as much legroom.”

“Yeah, but it’s _ours_ ,” Magnus says, and his eyes are shining with all the hope and enthusiasm Lucretia’s pretty sure Davenport hired him for. “Name and all.”

PR hates the name. Lucretia kind of loves it.

The door slides open again and the twins enter, pausing dramatically in the entrance of the room. Neither of them is in full uniform, which Lucretia’s pretty sure she should get used to. The elven delegations tend to assume non-Elves don’t speak their language, and she’d managed to hear them getting an earful about dressing inappropriately for the gala send off on Bisolis. Not that she’d been able to tell _how_ their outfits were inappropriate. The twins always  look like holonet stars to her. She still can’t tell them apart with one hundred percent accuracy. If they were ever actually in _uniform_ that would give it away, but she has yet to see them don it in full.

“Aw, beans,” says one twin. “We’re not the last ones here?”

Davenport gives them an unimpressed look. “No, that honor belongs to Barry.”

“Can’t believe the alien nerd beat us.” The twins jostle each other with their elbows, briefly, then sit down beside each other. 

“What’d we miss?”

“Check in reports,” Davenport says. “You’ve both made sure your stations are prepped for launch tomorrow?”

“Oh yeah, no sweat,” one of the twin says, waving a dismissive hand. “Nav’s all set.” Taako, then. “Holodisplay up and runnin’, all systems a-okay.”

“Yep.” Lup grins, sharp with excitement. “I don’t know what they’re expecting, but I’ve got a enough firepower to sink a dreadnaught on this baby.”

There’d been a little girl, back when Lucretia babysat, who’d once managed to entice a squirrel into the house, just to see what would happen. Sometimes the twins remind Lucretia of her — painfully clever, too curious for their own good, and juggernauts of chaotic energy.

“We’re not expecting anything,” Davenport says. “But we _are_ an exploration vessel.”

“Ch’yeah,” Lup says, nodding like she’s agreeing although there’s a certain amount of dismissal in her tone. “But demolition is as important for exploration as defense.”

“We’re fully trained,” Taako adds.

Davenport eyes them both for a moment and then turns to Lucretia. “Comms?”

“All systems fully operational,” Lucretia says, and smiles, quick and brief and almost private. “We’re ready for launch.”

“Good,” Davenport says, and checks his wrist again. “If Chief Engineer Bluejeans would join us, we could wrap this up. It seems like we’re in good shape. I _hope_ I can expect—”

The door opens and Barry stumbles into the room, out of breath. “Sorry,” he says. “So sorry, Captain. Lucretia. Everyone. The station’s AI had a glitch, so I was helping out, and then, uh, I got talking with the engineers and we just—” He runs a hand over his hair and manages a smile. “Sorry. It won’t happen again. What’d I miss?”

“The meeting,” Davenport says, dryly. “We just need your check in. Inspection complete?”

“Oh,” Barry says. “Uh, no. Not yet. Got pulled into the thing with the IPAS AI, but I’m headed straight to the Starblaster after this. Promise.”

Lucretia’s previous superiors would have reprimanded Barry for putting IPAS above his own ship. Davenport just nods and lets it pass. “Make sure to send me a full report when you’re done. We don’t want any surprises tomorrow morning.” 

He turns his attention to the group as a whole. “Everyone in this room is lucky,” he says. “Few people know when they’re at a turning point in history. Even fewer get a say in how that turn pans out. We have an opportunity here, a chance to steer four great peoples into the future, together. I chose this team, all of you, because I knew you were the right applicants for the job.” Davenport glances around the room, looking each of them in the eye. “The Starblaster. Tomorrow morning. 0800 hours.” He pauses. “Don’t fuck this up.”

Lucretia laughs before she even fully processes the sentiment and yeah — it’s a ragtag bunch and a totally new team dynamic for all of them, but they’re all here for a reason. Davenport chose them because he believes in them and nobody cares about this mission as much as he does. It means this is where they belong, no matter what self-doubt might have crept into Lucretia’s mind. This, right now, is exactly where she’s meant to be — standing on the precipice of history, ready to jump.

#

The Starblaster is small. Barry isn’t sure how he feels about that. Big ships feel safer. 

But the ship is beautiful, Barry thinks, absently running his hand against the railing as he walks down the corridor. A railing has been installed in case of emergency gravgen shutdown, although Barry’s not sure how exactly having a railing is going to help him if the gravgen enters a critical failure state. 

There are so many things that can go wrong on a starship. Airlocks involuntarily opening, navigational systems shorting out, gravgens and engines forced into cascade failures. People die all the time. A full five percent of terran experimental missions never come home, ten percent of those because of engineering or systems malfunctions. Space is deadly: that’s not tragedy, its a fact. Sentient beings were meant to stay planetside, where there are gravity and atmospheres and food supplies. 

And yet, all known races eventually took to the stars. There’s a history class that they teach at the Terran Academy for Science and Technology, about “Comparative Spatial Histories,” charting the development of starships across different planets and races, delving into the psychological reasoning for space travel. Curiosity features heavily in most accounts. 

Barry thinks there’s something philosophical there, about the appeal of the void, the search for life in an uncaring world. Something dreamy like that. It’s all irrelevant though, his job is to keep the systems from failing so that they, you know, don’t die. He’s about the concrete details, the numbers, the physical upkeep of things. It’s not easy, but he likes it a lot. It makes him feel useful. He likes working with his hands.

Walking into the engine room feels like coming home. There’s the gleaming warp core in the center of the room, the device that allows the ship to tesser across the universe. The word _tesser_ is common parlance in Common, coming from an old terran science fiction kids book, something Barry remembers reading in fourth grade. He was disappointed when real-life tessering was so much more mundane than the way it was written. He read _A Wrinkle in Time_ first for a book report, and then three more times because he fell in love with the idea of stepping across the universe. 

Barry kneels down by the warp core and pops the hatch open. There’s a delicate lattice of crystals inside, and he’s going to pull out each of the chips and examine them for imperfections. It’s a little extreme, sure, but this is the first extra-orbital launch that the Starblaster is embarking on, along with the first time they’re using the warp. 

The warp core and surrounding mechanical paraphernalia are all straight from the lab. That concerns him. New equipment, the cutting edge stuff, is always more prone to weird malfunctions that aren’t easily solved. He’d feel much more comfortable if they were using a Mark IX instead of the new Mark XI, and he’s not even sure how it’s going to interface with the elven tech, or the gnomish, or the dwarvish, or the traded for draconic and orcish. 

The ship is an amalgam of different planetary technologies, none of which runs on the same power source — they have three different fuel supplies, all with a solar-power backup – which were never meant to interface with one another. It’s a miracle that the ship runs at all. It’s aesthetically pleasing, sure, but Barry is all to aware that the brushed-chrome and glasstic siding hides a multitude of wires that were never supposed to be put together. 

When he was a kid, Barry used to watch shuttle explosions.  He liked watching the fuel tanks discharge with massive clouds of orange flame as they took off. They looked like expanding balloons to him. When he was eight he’d been sitting in front of the holo, watching the news when the _SOJOURNER V_ exploded. They played the pilots last words in real time: “Goodbye, and tell my— .“ Then the radio cut out, but on screen, the pieces of the starship burned, fell, the announcer silent. 

His mom found him watching the shuttle crash and made him change the channel because she thought he shouldn’t be exposed to that sort of thing. He just changed it back when she left the room. Warp core explosions are fantastic — first there’s a blast of eye-blinding light and then space twists five dimensionally, the vessel that the warp core is housed in folding in on itself until it disappears, and then the pieces of it suddenly appear, scattered in a field of gore and debris. Maybe she was right, though, because half the time he can’t get on a shuttle without having a mini-panic attack. It’s kind of embarrassing.

He doesn’t tell anyone about his fascination with shuttle crashes. They do a psych screening for anyone applying for deep-space missions, and he had told them about his anxiety, and he hadn’t exactly expected to be picked because he figured that those two marks on his psych record were enough to disqualify him. He would have been fine with it — he’d worked on integrating the designs for the Starblaster, and that would have been enough. That’s been most of his career, anyway. 

But here he is. He’s very grateful. Spaceships are fascinating in the same way that a firecracker is fascinating: there is so much potential to go wrong, and so much potential for something _spectacular._

He blows dust off of a chip. That probably wouldn’t have caused any problems, but sometimes particulates cause hiccups in the core’s functioning. He puts it back in the slot. There are thirty-six of these. He’s examined twenty of them so far.

He probably should have done this last night, except he got called in to work on the station AI,and spent far too long looking over her code and rewiring some of the components. At least he ran the matter-entanglement engine through a full systems cycle. 

The station AI is a sweetie, though, and he would have felt bad if he hadn’t helped the station techs out by spending some of the time re-jiggering some of her older code. She had been built to deal with a smaller population, and what with new wing added to IPAS last month, there had been a few hiccups that the techs on-station weren’t completely familiar with. Barry’s last job was upkeep of starship AI, so he gets called in to consult on these things every once in a while. 

He worries about the Starblaster, how it will do without an artificial intelligence to interface with the ship systems and with the larger IPA system. He’s boarded deadships before — morbid name for a mindless hunk of metal —  and while they’re fine, totally normal, most ships _are_ deadships anyway, there’s still less precision. He wonders how much kissing ass the Captain would have to do to get an AI installed onboard. 

That’s all a pipe dream, though. Captain Drew Davenport is well known for liking manual handling. But it could still be useful, Barry thinks, to have an automated intelligent system. Especially for some of the more tedious tasks, and to have redundancies in case of a system failure. It could be good to have a second pair of eyes watching. Barry’s used to directing or working with a team. This is the first time he’s the sole engineer working on a starship, not to mention the first time anyone’s ever worked on an integrated one. It’s a lot of responsibility. 

He’s going to do his best. He’s here to keep the ship running. He can do that, he thinks. He’s good with machines, if nothing else. 

The Captain’s voice on the intercom startles him. 

_“All crew to bridge,”_ the voice echoes in the room and down the corridor. Barry sticks the last chip in the slot and bangs the hatch shut. He jumps to his feet, and runs out of the room. The first thought that he has is that something’s gone wrong. If it has, it’s okay, Barry thinks, jogging down the corridor. 

He’ll fix it. 

#

Davenport eases the Starblaster away from the station, eyes on the holodisplay that shows the space outside their ship. He could — should — get Taako to direct their path away from the station, to a point in space where the auto-pilot can take over steering the ship and they can all relax and celebrate a bit, but he doesn’t need to. He’s the best pilot on his homeworld, possibly the best in the entire IPA. One little ship is nothing.

He guides the ship forward and up in a smooth arc, free from the station and its orbit, and then loops them back to give the holofeed camera crews a bit of a show. He fought tooth and nail for this mission, had to convince _everyone_ that it was a good idea, feels like he dragged the whole of the IPA kicking and screaming into the future with this plan — he’s going to show off a little.

Gnomes are a communal people — telepathic races tend to be. He’s used to dropping into the heads of his friends and family for a quick chat when he’s back home, on world. Even coming up the ranks, before the Alliance, gnomish meetings were always silent — hard to lie, in your head. Honesty hurts, but it also keeps you on the straight and narrow. His people had fallen in line to support his mission quickly, but there’d been some distrust at first. Humans with their eerily quiet, psychically null minds were unsettling to be around. Dwarves, when you could connect with one, had brains that creaked like an old tree and made no sense to a gnome, and elves were… well, they were elves. _Everyone_ had an issue with the elves. If they hadn’t gotten up in arms about being excluded and insisted on joining the Alliance, Davenport’s pretty sure everything would have gone much smoother back when they were building the accords.

But the elves joined up, and so did everyone else, and now they have this — this tiny fleck of silver in the vast darkness of space, this small blip in judgement that Davenport’s clung to and forced into existence through sheer, unyielding force of will, this ship, The Starblaster, carrying all his hopes for the future.

Davenport’s never felt as much pride for anything as he does for this ship and his crew—misfits though they might be, they were all hand-picked to be on his team. He believes in them. He believes in this mission. Davenport believes that the seven of them can keep the InterPlanetary Alliance from collapsing in on itself, give them a symbol to cling to — something new and shiny and wonderful.

If they don’t, if they can’t give the IPA something to rally around, then they’re fucked — too many differences and too much too fast for their partnership to last, and too much tension left from negotiating the various treaties involved for it to not end in fighting. He’s watched, over the past few years, the conversation shift from “exchange” to “solidarity.” Planetary solidarity. Singular. 

Davenport’s been to war. He’s going to do everything in his power to stop kids like the ones on his ship from having to go too.

So he believes in this mission, and he’s willing to do the PR showboating necessary to get the rest of the IPA on board with it too. He’s willing to circle the station and flex a little, to weave between the rings of the IPAS and show off.

Maybe that’s not all for the holofeed, but fuck it — sometimes Davenport needs to do things for himself. It’s been a long few years, dragging this mission over the finish line.

Davenport glances back at his crew. Barry’s looking a little green and clutching the railing that runs along the inside wall of the bridge, but Magnus lets out a low woop of excitement and Davenport can’t help smiling in response. He chose well.

A voice comes over the comm broadcast, patched in to broadcast in the bridge so they can all hear it. “Starblaster,” it says, low and amused. Officer Hogan, he thinks. There’s a slight Gnomish accent to his Common that Davenport recognizes. “You’re clear to —”

Then a crash on the other end of the line, muffled voices, something urgent and high pitched, and then Hogan again. “Ensign, stand down. What —”

A thunderous boom echoes through the comms, almost deafening, and Davenport jerks back. He sees a glimmer of light and whirls his head around. Taako is yelling — outside the Starblaster an explosion blooms at the base of InterPlanetary Alliance Station, a flicker of orange flame erupting out of the silver arc of IPAS’s lowest ring, bright and terrible for a split second before the emptiness of space sucks up the air that makes the fire possible. Debris careensaway from the station and before anyone can react there’s a second explosion further up the station — a burst of white hot light like a flashbulb going off, devastatingly loud over the still-broadcasting comms.

Davenport sees the crew looking at him in concern, but Davenport’s gut is telling him to pull back from the situation — to fly. He pushes onward, heading away from the station and forcing the ship forward — fast. Not engaging the warp core yet, still leaving the possibility of returning, depending on their orders.

“Captain, where —” Lucretia’s question is cut off by a clattering over the comms.

“Starblaster, if you’re still out there — keep going,” Hogan says, his voice staticky. “That’s an order, Davenport. Engage warp. Weapons are —”

There’s a sickening, wet crunch on the other end of the line. Someone on the bridge is shouting — Magnus — saying they need to turn back, to help survivors. Lup is raising her voice as well, asking whether she should engage fire. The comm line goes dead. Lucretia starts trying to hail the station again, to get in touch with someone on Bisolis. Taako yells something at Lup in Elvish, and she yells back, picking up a heated argument, speaking too fast for Davenport to catch much of what they’re saying. Chaos. They all knew people on station, Davenport thinks. Maybe not well, but they knew them. 

Davenport’s focus narrows to his crew, to his ship, to his orders — none of them, save Merle, have much experience. None of them have seen a disaster before. Bisolis Spaceport, for all intents and purposes, no longer exists. He has his orders. Davenport needs to be the calm center of the storm that is his bridge. 

“Navigator Taako, are we ready to engage warp?” he says, voice piercing the haze of crosstalk on the bridge. 

Taako startles, looks away from the tragedy unfolding on their viewport. 

“U-uh, yeah,” he says, jerking back from his argument, fingers flying across his station, voice stabilizing. “Coordinates set. Ready when you are, Captain.” Davenport nods. He presses his foot on the gas, metaphorically. 

He does what he has to do — he engages the warp core and steers them towards a newly uncertain future.

# 

The ship disappears. One moment it is there, the next it is gone. 

Debris from the station drifts, unimpeded, through the void left behind. 


	2. Aftershocks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The crew of the Starblaster, having warped away from the explosion that destroyed their home station, finds themselves in deep space with some important decisions to make.

The emerge from the warp in empty space. Lucretia attempts to hail Bisolis again as soon as they’re out — good instincts — but the rest of the crew still seems shaken. Davenport can see it on their faces but he can’t _hear_ it, not in his head, not the way he could if he were working with a gnomish crew. He’s viscerally aware — really, _truly_ aware, for the first time — that he is the only gnome on this mission.

“Cap… Captain, we have to go back,” Magnus says, looking more distressed by the weight of what they all just saw than Davenport would have expected — Magnus has seen conflict But Davenport needs to remember he’s the only one here who’s experienced interstellar war. Even Merle has only experienced the outskirts of it — terraforming, exploring, patching up the troops. “They need our help. We can —”

“Lucretia, have you got Bisolis?” Davenport asks, cutting Magnus off. He needs to take charge of the situation before it spirals out of control. He’s trying to replay the last few moments before they warped — two explosions, one at the base, then one higher up. Strategically placed.

Davenport has seen plenty of destruction. He’s seen plenty of sabotage. This? This was _purposeful_.

“No answer,” Lucretia says, voice clipped, short. She’s holding back her emotions like a champ, keeping things professional. Her resume had her flying rescue mission for the Terran Exploration and Defense Fleet — the experience shows.

“They just lost a station. They’ll be busy,” Davenport says, mostly for the benefit of the rest of the room. “Taako, how far are we from Faerun?”

Taako freezes in place and glances at his holodisplay. “I — fuckin’ far,” he admits. “We’d have to warp again, and —”

“That can’t be right,” Davenport said. “Faerun is our next stop. Are you sure?”

“I didn’t — we didn’t exactly warp towards Faerun, when we left Bisolis,” Taako says, wincing. “I sorta just found the first empty place in space and snapped the coordinates.”

“Yet another reason to go back, Captain,” Magnus says. “They’re in _trouble_ and we’re wasting time. We should be helping rescue any survivors — we should let Bisolis know we’re okay.”

“Barry.” Davenport turns in his chair to where Barry was standing when they warped. He’s crouching, Merle’s hand on his arm, trying to catch his breath. Anxiety disorder, Davenport remembers. “Engineer Bluejeans.”

Barry looks up from the floor and nods. “C-captain?”

“How soon can we warp?”

Barry glances around the bridge, at the rest of the crew. “It’s — protocol says we should wait. I should do readings. That was our first run on a new core and the Mark XI’s are brand new. They’ve been in use for a while, sure, but when you’re talking about repeat tessering with no cool down time, there’s always —”

“So we can’t warp back yet,” Davenport says, and thank the stars because the Starblaster has excessive weaponry, but in a real combat scenario, against an enemy smart enough to take out the station before making their presence known, they’d likely be outgunned. Their demolitions are meant for clearing rubble during exploration, not for interstellar combat.

“Are you saying we just have to sit here?” Lup asks. “Captain —”

“We have the recording,” Lucretia says, looking up from the comms. “I still can’t hail Bisolis, but we have the recording from the — from just before we left. Maybe there’s something we missed.”

“Play it,” Davenport says, turning his attention to the viewport. Lucretia hesitates for only a moment before hitting play.

They watch the InterPlanetary Alliance Station explode a second time and Davenport feels just as useless now as he did in the moment.

The recording is full of crosstalk from the bridge  and Davenport has to strain to try and make out what Hogan’s saying, to hear what happened on the station right before they lost contact.

There’s too much noise.

“Lucretia, can you clean up the audio on this?” Davenport asks, as the video shuts off.

“I can try, I mean…” She takes a deep breath. “Yes. I can clean it up.”

“Good. We’ll have a better idea of what our next course of action should be if we know what happened immediately before the explosion. In the meantime, I’ll take the comm. Keeping trying to reach Bisolis. Eventually, someone will pick up.”

Davenport looks at the rest of his crew. Aside from Merle, they’re all shaken. They’re all _young_ — untested. This was supposed to be an easy mission. Warp to Faerun to test the core. Asses the ship for any necessary repairs. One more press tour with the brass, then two months in uncharted space. A quick first run to test both the Starblaster and its crew. To test _him_ , as the captain of a ship and not a squadron. He feels woefully unprepared.He absolutely cannot let anyone know.

“This will take some time,” he says, taking pity on all these bereft looking young people in his charge. Common balanced, Barry is only a year younger than he is, but suddenly Davenport feels much older than his age. “You’re relieved from the bridge, but I don’t want you making any ansible calls. The public frequencies aren’t secure. If there’s something out there — if someone attacked IPAS, they can’t know where we are. We’re going to need every advantage we can muster.”

Taako glances at his sister on the other side of the bridge. Magnus looks like he’s about to protest, so Davenport keeps talking rather than give Magnus the chance to say something he’ll regret. “We all knew people on that station, but right now our priority is the mission.” He looks at Magnus in particular. “Take a walk. Calm down.”

Davenport turns to Lucretia. “Transfer the comms to my station. Focus on cleaning the recording.”

“Yes, sir,” Lucretia says, voice shaking only a little. His display lights up with the comm options a second later and Davenport puts in his earpiece. The rest of the crew is dismissed so they can  blow off steam and compose themselves. He has to trust that they’re adult enough to handle themselves. There’s no time for hand holding.

In his heart of hearts, Davenport is with Magnus. He wants to go back — to head straight for whoever attacked IPAS and put the Starblaster through its paces. Now is not the time and this is not the crew, but Davenport was a fighter pilot before he was anything else and he was damned good at it. His squadron holds the record for the most kobold fighters taken down in a single battle. He’s a hero back on Parcel. He’s supposed to be good at _this_ too. He’s _going_ to be good at this job. And right now, that means not flying the Starblaster into danger with no recon and no plan. It means focusing on keeping his crew alive.

#

Magnus does not calm down. Magnus has no intention of following the captain’s orders, and while thirty minutes into their two-months-mission is a little early for mutiny, there are more important things to consider.

He needs to make a call, unsecured lines be damned.

“Can I borrow this?” he asks Lucretia, but he’s already picking up the long-distance commlink before she can say yes. “Thanks,” he says brusquely, and then he’s walking away. In another situation, he would feel bad, but the shock of watching the explosion is wearing off and he’s filled with a quickly numbing fear. His fiancee was on Bisolis to see him off before all the bureaucratic nonsense started. They got dinner, then got more than dinner. They said goodbye. They’re used to saying goodbye — between his InterPlanetaryAlliance and Terran Eexploration and Defense Fleet Postings and her apprenticeships, they’re a long distance relationship more often than not.

Julia was supposed to take a shuttle off-planet three days ago, but Magnus can’t help the irrational worry that she’s dead.  She’s got a job lined up at Goldcliff Shipyard, but he can’t help worrying — what if she hadn’t gotten off planet? What if her shuttle was delayed? What if she had decided to spend a few more days on the Bisolis? What if she was on the station? They’re engaged, but when both parties in a relationship are spaceside, that doesn’t necessarily mean each  always knows what the other is doing.

The door to the rec room slides open. It’s big, a combining kitchen and living area for the crew — shared recreational public-private space. Magnus walks inside, already dialing a frequency he knows by heart. He calls it like clockwork every three days. Long-distance calls are expensive when you’re not using company money and every three days is what they can afford with his salary and her stipend. He and Julia send ansigraphs more than they talk, ever since Magnus left home.

The familiar crackling, the tinny music that plays while long-distance comms connect. He waits with bated breath.

“Hello?” says Magnus’s favorite voice in the universe. Magnus releases a breath he didn’t know he was holding. She’s okay. Julia is a little hoarse. Did he wake her up? Does she know what’s going on?

“Hi Jules,” Magnus says, voice breaking a little bit. “Hi, I’m not dead.”

“Mags? What do you mean you’re not dead, did something happen? Is the ship alright? _Did the ship blow up_? I told you that the warp core in conjunction with the engine had a high probability of —”

“Jules, no. Jules, honey, the ship’s fine —” Magnus says.

“You can’t just say that you’re _not dead_ , not if you don’t want me to worry about you,” Julia says, exasperated.

“But I’m _not_ dead,” Magnus points out. “And I figured you should know that, because you might think I’m dead when you see the news, but I can’t tell you why because the comms aren’t secure and Cap’s got us on radio silence.”  

A pause filled with ansible static.

“Mags,” Julia says slowly. “Are you going against the captain’s orders on the _first day_ of the mission?”

“That’s irrelevant,” Magnus says. “Don’t worry about it! Where are you now, did you get to Goldcliff okay?”

“I’m fine,” she says, accepting his misdirection. “Got off at Baldur’s Gate, caught a ride here. I’m working my butt off. You know, in a good way. But Mags, should you really be talking with me?”

“Er, probably not,” Magnus admits. “But I figure as long as I don’t give you details, we’re good, right?”

“But —” Julia says, and whatever she’s going to say is cut off by Magnus catching sight of Merle hovering outside the rec room door.

“Shit, one of my crewmates caught me, loveyoubye,” Magnus says and hastily cuts the line before Julia can say she loves him back. He rips the earbud out of his ear and tries to hide the commlink behind his back. Merle just waves him off as he walks into the room. He takes a seat at the kitchen table.

“Wasn’t trying to interrupt,” Merle says. “Lady friend?” he asks, trying for sleazy but landing on concerned.

“My fiance,” Magnus says. “I needed to tell her that I wasn’t, you know, dead.”

Merle huffs in surprise. “You’re engaged? Correct me if I’m wrong, kiddo, but aren’t you a little young for that, human-wise?”

It’s an idle question, but Magnus bristles anyway. “I’m twenty-two!”

“Common balanced?” Merle’s brow furrows.

“Yeah,” Magnus says.

Merle shakes his head. “Pan’s shorts, you’re just a kid.”

Magnus scowls and sits down across from Merle, forgetting to hide the commlink and placing it on the table. “How old are _you?_ ” he asks.

Merle shrugs. “Eh...Fifty-four, common-balanced, give or take.”

Magnus whistles. He’d guessed as much, but aging looks different in dwarves and he can’t see much of Merle’s face behind the beard. It’s big, bushy, and elaborately braided. Most definitely against regulations. “Jeez, you’re like _Steven’s_ age.”

“Who’s Steven?”

“Julia’s dad,” Magnus says. “He kinda raised me.” He doesn’t mention that Steven took him in after his parents died, that he gave an angry, self-righteous kid an outlet to vent, a home, and a family. That Steven offered to take him on as an apprentice, or that Julia had wanted him to stay, but they all knew that Magnus wanted to go spaceside. See the stars and other planets, be like the heroes in his movies. The TEDF posters in his room weren’t subtle. Steven promised that he could always come back home. Magnus feels a pang of nostalgia. He hasn’t been back to Raven’s Roost — to _Earth_ — since he graduated from the TEDF Academy.

“Julia’s your fiance?” Merle asks, and Magnus nods.

“We’re getting married once she finishes her apprenticeships,” he says. “She builds spaceships — she’s gonna be head engineer of Hammer and Tongs eventually.” Magnus likes bragging about Julia. H&T is one of the most respected Terran shipyards out there, and Merle — gratifyingly — nods in recognition.

He glances at the commlink, too, and Magnus remembers that he’s not just hiding out here here to brag about his fiance.

“I don’t suppose you, er, mind not telling the captain about me taking the comm?” Magnus asks hopefully. “I didn’t say anything classified, I pro—”

“Relax, kiddo,” Merle says, holding up a hand to cut Magnus off. “I get it. I was coming in here to ask if I could use the ansible after you.”

“But, the captain said we’re on radio silence,” Magnus says, as if he didn’t just ignore those orders himself. He’s surprised that Merle, the most experienced member of the crew — seven terraforming missions, four tours of exploration duty — is suggesting breaking the rules. Magnus always assumed that the longer you stayed in the corps, the more straightlaced you got. That’s how it was at the TEDF, anyway. He switched to the IPA for a reason.

Merle shakes his head. “Drew’s a good guy,” he says. Magnus is momentarily thrown, hearing Davenport’s first name. He supposes it makes sense that Davenport and Merle know each other – they’re both technically senior IPRE staff. “But,” Merle continues. “He’s also used’ta runnin’ solo things, not teams. He shouldn’t have cut off comms — that’s just askin’ for mutiny. People have families, you know? Gotta at least let them know people are okay. Besides, with the amount of frequencies out there — chances anyone’s listening in are a million to one. Literally. The guys down in Research and Development calculated the odds, couple of years back.”

“Oh,” Magnus says.

Merle nods. “You gotta let your people have their bonds,” he says sagely. “Otherwise it all falls apart.”

Magnus nods back, just as serious. “I have no idea what that means.”

Merle laughs, and motions for Magnus to give him the long-distance commlink. Magnus hands him the ansible, and Merle pulls out the earpiece so he can use the phone on speaker. His hair must make earpieces annoying.

“Get outta here,” Merle says, not unkindly. “It looks too suspicious if we’re both hanging about with the ansible.”

Magnus smiles and gets up from the table. As he leaves the room, he hears someone high-pitched on the other end of the commlink, and Merle’s response: “Mavis? Aw, kiddo, Daddy’s just calling you guys ‘cause he missed you — you’re on speaker? Oh, hey there, Mookie — ”

The rest of Merle’s conversation is cut off by the door sliding shut.

#

Lup isn’t sure what she should be doing. It feels anticlimatic to just leave the bridge, but there’s nothing she can do right now. She’s gunner, backup navigator, science officer. She’s meant for action, and right now they’re not _moving_. It’s a relief when Barry abruptly announces that he’s ““I’m going to go check on the warp core,” after the captain’s done giving orders, stating it as if preoccupied with something. “I could use a hand?”

His voice is level. He’s gripping the cuffs of his sleeves tightly enough that his knuckles are turning white — which is maybe not great, physiologically, but Lup doesn’t know enough about terrans to be sure.

“We’ll help,” she says, glancing over at Taako, who has returned to his station. His ears are standing straight up and are on the verge of trembling. She can tell that he’s going to significant effort to keep his expression calm. Lup wishes she could grab his hand and figure out what he’s thinking, but their stations aren’t next to one another. She needs to get him off the bridge or he’s going to spend the next few hours frantically going over his calculations, trying to figure out what he did wrong, whether he did anything wrong at all.

Taako only had a few minutes to navigate them away from Bisolis. He didn’t make a mistake getting them here, wherever here is. Lup knows Taako’s not going to see it that way — anything short of easy perfection is unacceptable. She gets it. It’s the same for her.

Lup wishes there’d been something for her to shoot.

“Taako, you up for some nerd shit?” she asks, keeping her voice light. The atmosphere on the bridge is heavy after Davenport’s speech. Magnus disappeared to stars-know-where and Lucretia is fiddling with her switchboard. The captain himself is looking at the holodisplay in front of his station, frowning, Merle at his side, speaking to him.  

Taako’s head turns toward her and he nods, a sharp dip of his chin. “Yeah, I’m down for some nerd shit,” Taako says, and he’s just as flip as she is. “Lead the way, Barold.”

“That’s not my name,” Barry says mildly, grabbing his tablet from his station and heading off the bridge, like he expects them to follow. Lup walks to Taako and grabs his hand, as if she’s going to pull him along with her, and if it’s really to get skin to skin contact, well, no one else needs to know she wants to talk privately.

Taako is transmitting the general emotion of “fuck, we fucked up, I fucked up, oh fuck,” a palpable knot of tension that psychically radiates from him as loud as a scream, carrying  an undercurrent of fear with it that reverberates against Lup’s own. The feedback loop pings back and forth between her and Taako  and puts Lup’s teeth on edge because she doesn’t want to acknowledge that she’s scared.

How could she not be though? They’re on a ship full of strangers, potentially stranded in space, and there’s nowhere to run if things break bad.

When he realizes Lup’s feeding fear back into the cycle, Taako’s transmit swaps over to concern, which leads to Lup swapping to reassurance — both over her emotions and his — and then Taako’s transmitting indignation — scared, who’s scared, he’s not scared — which makes Lup —

“You guys okay?” Barry asks, glancing back at them. Lup blinks, realizing that she and Taako have been following Barry down the corridor towards the warp room in the center of the ship silently, with their steps in perfect synchronization. It’s the type of thing that freaks people out sometimes. Lup lets go of Taako’s hand, breaking the connection. No need to be rude to one of their crewmembers. First day on the job. If they can’t work together under pressure, then this mission’s a bust from the start.

“We’re fine, babe,” she says, aiming for reassuring although she’s not sure she gets there.

Barry nods and slows so he’s walking next to them. “Just, you’re being pretty quiet,“ he says, and it’s refreshingly un-condescending in tone. He winces a little anyway. “Uh, sorry. Didn’t mean to make you feel self-conscious, or anything. Um.”

“It’s cool,” Taako says. “You’re fine, kemosabe. No sweat. What’re we doin’, anyway?”

“Checking on the core,” Barry says. “We put a lot of pressure on it – we’ve warped out further than we were supposed to, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the chips cracked under pressure, which is going to be a real bitch and a half.Plus I want to run everything through a test cycle and check the wiring, and — uh, sorry, I’m rambling. Basically I want to run a systems check.”

“You’re being real thorough, huh?” Lup says.

Barry grimaces. “I’ve got to be. This ship is running on duct tape and string — high tech duct tape, sure, but duct tape.”

“That sounds like the opposite of good, my dude,”  Taako says.

Barry laughs, but it’s more exhalation than amusement. “Yeah, you could say that.”

It takes a special keycard and code to open the heavy lead-lined doors that shield the warp core.On a larger ship, only higher-level engineering personnel would have access. On the Starblaster, everyone knows the code and all their ID cards open the engine room.

Lup flashes her card against the panel, punches in the code, and the door slides open.

The warp core is a transparent tube made of some sort of synthesized crystal, housing a glowing coil that runs down from the ceiling to the core’s base. The base has a hatch into which chips made out of some _other_ type of crystal are slotted., and Lup’s not the person to ask about how any of this actually works cause neither she nor Taako took the engineering track at the Academy. It might as well be magic.

Barry’s shoulders loosen as he walks into the room. Lup follows him in, Taako trailing behind her, and she brushes her hand against his. He’s thinking about his navigation calculations again, that tension building. She radiates exasperated reassurance back.

“Stop tying yourself in knots. You didn’t wang it up,” Lup says. Taako scowls and snatches his hand back as if burnt.

Barry glances back at the two of them, awkwardly turning his neck from where he’s sitting on the floor. “Did you say something?”

“Taako’s sulking about ‘fucking up’ the warp coordinates,” she says, putting air quotes around “fucking up.” Maybe a conversation will take Taako’s mind off of things. If he’s pissy, he’ll be distracted, and she’ll be distracted too.  

“I’m not sulkin’. Shut your face, Lulu,” Taako snipes, but it’s half-hearted. “Shoulda calculated better is all. Cha’boy’s better than this. _Fuck!_ ”

Barry shakes his head. “It’s a miracle you got us out of there at all, Taako,” he says, absolutely matter-of-fact. “That’s the fastest navigation calculation I’ve seen succeed.”

Taako perks up a little. “Yeah?”

“Trust me,” Barry says. “It could have gone _far_ worse.” His voice dips into ominous for a moment, but the chill recedes as quickly as it arrived when he peers down into the hatch and groans. “Aw, beans. One of the chips shattered. Can you go over to the desk and grab me the tweezers? They’re, er, somewhere. Definitely there.”

“Onnit,” Taako says, and goes to root around in the desk in the corner of the room, a utilitarian chunk of metal furniture. It’s got real-paper textbooks scattered across the top, a bunch of electronic devices dangling out of the drawers, and presumably tweezers, somewhere within the mess.  

Lup kneels down next to Barry. “Want some help? I’ve got smaller fingers than you. _Dextrous_.” She wiggles them and Barry laughs.

“Thanks,” he says, shifting so she can stick her arms in the hatch. The remaining chips need to be removed if they want to clean out the shattered crystal remnants of the ones that broke. It’s bad design, but at least they’re easy to remove.  She and Barry fall into a rhythm, Lup delicately pulling the chips out of their slots one by one and passing them to him to take care of.

“It’s a miracle we didn’t also blow up,” Barry says, after a moment, still focused on the hatch. “We should have been caught in whatever got the station.”  

“Yeah?” Lup says. She can’t see his pupils behind the reflected light on his glasses.

“Yeah,” Barry confirms. “We were originally supposed to launch a half-hour later.”

“What?” Taako yelps, across the room.

Barry nods. “Yep. Original takeoff was supposed to be, uh, a half an hour later,  eighteen-hundred, station-time. Techs gave us a better slot ‘cause I helped them with the A.I. last night. Lucky break, huh?” There’s no mirth to his wry statement, just a suppressed hysteria.

His hands are steady as he takes the last crystal from Lup. He looks at her. “Clean these off, please? There are microfiber cloths in there.” He gestures to one of the built-in cabinets, directing her like Lup’s a lab tech or something. This is him in his element, she realizes. It’s a far cry from the panicky guy on the bridge.

Lup nods, and as she gets up, her hand brushes against Barry’s arm accidentally, but there’s no transmission —Terrans are psy-null.  He could be thinking anything, Lup realizes. He could be an automaton. She suppresses a shiver. There’s no need to be speciest. She can’t afford to be, with this job, but it’s hard not to be a little creeped out

Taako takes her place, handing Barry the tweezers. “You had friends on the station?” he asks, not unkindly, but clumsily.

Barry shrugs. “I knew some of the techs. Worked on the A.I. a bit. Not close, really.” He glances at Taako, and then over at Lup, brow furrowing. “Say, there’s no one the two of you need to call, right? Pretty sure Captain’s going to drop ansible silence soon, if you want to go back to the bridge.”

Lup shakes her head. “Nah, s’just us, babe.”

“No one’s waitin’ at the comms for _our_ beautiful voices,” Taako adds.

“How about you, Bluejeans?” Lup asks. “Gotta let your next-of-kin know that your tush is alright?”

He shakes his head. “No, no one’s waiting up for me either. Um, my next-of-kin, I mean my mom, she died a few of months back,” he says. “I haven’t updated the paperwork.”

Lup feels like an ass for asking. “Oh, jeez. I’m sorry, babe.”

“Thanks,” Barry says, and he smiles at her, looking up from where he’s kneeling at the foot of the warp core. “It’s okay. Death happens.”

“Well shit. Definitely learned that today,” Taako says, and Barry laughs, and Lup laughs. If nothing else, maybe they’ll all at least get out of this with their senses of humor intact.

#

Lucretia’s hands shake as she tries to isolate the IPAS audio from before the explosion. She’s excruciatingly aware of her posture, of Davenport behind her at the helm, the fact that she’s second in command of this crew. She thought she understood what that meant when she took the commission, but she hadn’t, not at all.

Second in command means staying the course. It means not letting the crew _see_ that her hands are shaking. It means not thinking about her parents on Mars, sitting at home waiting for the holobroadcast from Bisolis to be beamed to them so they can watch their little girl take off.

She talked to them after the ceremony, before the reception and the impromptu afterparty in the twins’s quarters. Her parents had’ been worried, the way they’re always worried before she sets out on an assignment, and she’d rolled her eyes and told them she’d be _fine_ , that this was basically just a diplomatic mission and a _short_ one to boot. She’d hung up on them, annoyed that they weren’t more excited for her.

She keeps thinking about them watching the footage of IPAS exploding,keeps thinking about them assuming the Starblaster went up with it.

Magnus took the long-distance commlink. Lucretia should tell Davenport. He’s right about civilian ansible lines not being secure, especially not over long distances — anyone can tune into the same frequency and hear your conversation — but it’s hard to care when all she wants to do is call her parents.

She doesn’t know if Magnus even _has_ parents waiting to receive the broadcast of the Starblaster’s launch. She knows he’s from Earth and that he patrolled the outskirts of the terran colonies before applying for the Starblaster IPA assignment, but that’s it.

It’s taking her longer than it should to clean up the recording because her mind keeps wandering. She’s playing it over and over as she isolates their individual voices and strips them off the track. Lucretia feels like she’s going to know this clip by heart by the time she’s finished. She’s listened to Taako and Lup arguing in Elvish about whether they need to run or stay in fight a dozen times. Heard Magnus shouting about turning the ship around to help any survivors. Heard herself, voice small and uncertain, trying to ask Davenport where they were going. Barry and Merle are on the recording too, muffled and easy to miss. She can only _just_ hear Barry’s breathing picking up sharp and fast, Merle murmuring to him about pinching his nose shut and tilting his head forward.

In the background, again and again, she hears the grisly _thunk_ that silences the IPAS officer on the comm line.

One by one, Lucretia strips the crew’s voices out of the recording. There’s interference on the other end — the sound goes staticy and funny after the first explosion — but once the noise from the Starblaster’s bridge is gone, it’s easier to hear what’s being said before the line goes dead. Lucretia plays it on her own earpiece a couple of times, adjusting the levels between plays until she’s happy with it.

“Captain,” she says, turning towards the captain’s chair. .

Davenport looks up from his display, face grim. “You finished cleaning the recording?”

Lucretia nods. “I finished,” she says. “What’s — no luck reaching Bisolis?”

“None,” he says, and there’s a look in his eyes that says he suspects the worst. Lucretia doesn’t want to think about it. “We’ll gather the crew and listen together.”

Lucretia’s listened to the recording more than enough times, but she nods. “Understood. There’s — there’s nothing you need to worry about them hearing. If you were worried.”

Davenport pauses, looking mildly surprised by the suggestion that he might worry what his crew hears. He’s a different kind of captain than the ones Lucretia’s used to, but this is a whole different kind of ship. “That’s — good,” he says, after a moment. “I don’t believe in keeping secrets from the people under my command, but thank you. You’re right. I should have asked. Call the rest of the crew to the bridge, please.”

“Yes, sir.” Lucretia switches on the ship’s intercom system. “All crew to bridge,” she says. “I repeat, all crew to bridge.”

Magnus arrives first, as if  he was hovering right outside, shooting Lucretia an apologetic look as he moves to his station. He doesn’t have the commlink on him which is _troubling_ , but then Merle walks in with it and doesn’t bother being subtle about handing it over.

Davenport frowns at him. “We’re on comm lockdown,” he says.

Merle shrugs. “I got kids, Cap,” he says. “Got info for you too. Doesn’t look like IPAS blowing up is common knowledge yet. They didn’t say anything about it and that’s the kinda thing Mookie wouldn’t have been able to _not_ talk about. That kid likes his explosions.”

“Bisolis hasn’t answered any attempts to call,” Davenport says, as Barry and the twins walk into the bridge. “Barry, how does the warp core look?”

Barry hesitates, which in another engineer might mean the warp core had shattered into a million pieces and they were stranded in deep space, but this is Barry. “It’s — okay,” he says. “I had to clean it and replace one of the crystals, but that’s not unusual for a first outing. If we had the time, I’d run a full diagnostic, but the surface level damage is within the margins of acceptability.”

“And it’s usable?”

There’s another pause, while Barry considers this, frowning. “We can warp once more, but after that I’d want to take the core through a full suit of tests before we used it again.”

“I’ll take that under advisement,” Davenport says, and turn turns his chair towards the comm station. “Lucretia managed to clean the recording. Are you prepared to play?”

Lucretia nods. “The audio gets a little fuzzy towards the end, but I’ve cleared it up as well as I can — you can hear what they’re saying on the station right before — right before the broadcast cut out.” She switches the sound from her earpiece to the bridge speakers and hits play. Lucretia’s cut the recording short, focused in on the moments they didn’t hear the first time, too distracted by everything going haywire.

“Ensign, stand down,” says the recorded voice. He’s got a Gnomish accent and Lucretia’s sure he is — was — someone Davenport knew. There are a lot of Gnomes working for the InterPlanetary Alliance — more than any other race — and she’s heard the full recording. “What do you think —”

The sound of the explosion is muffled, because Lucretia muffled it. The screams on the recording are not. The bridge is silent as they listen to the sound of something — a chair, maybe — tipping over and hitting the floor and then the second explosion comes.

The comms person on IPAS picks up the mic again, his voice steady but his breathing haggard. “Starblaster, if you’re still out there — keep going. That’s an order, Davenport. Engage warp. Weapons are targeting the Star —” Lucretia winces in time with the stomach-turning crunch that silences the voice. There’s a moment where the entire recording is the sound of people yelling — fighting — and then a wet, rattling intake of breath. A cough that was lost under the din of the Starblaster’s bridge in the original broadcast.

“Drew,” says the Gnomish voice, and Lucretia hears someone else on the bridge stifle a gasp she feels entirely sympathetic to. Davenport _knew_ them, whoever the comms person was. “Keep _fucking_ going,” says the voice. “Faerun — the Alliance. Let them know. Starblaster, you’re our only hope. You’re —”

The line cuts out. The recording stops.

Lucretia lets everyone process for a moment before taking a deep breath. “I can play it again,” she says, and turns to look at the rest of the crew. “If you need me to.”

“Send me the recording,” Davenport says. “Nobody needs to hear that a second time if they don’t want to, but you all deserved to know what happened.” He glances around the bridge. His hands are steady. His gaze doesn’t waver. Davenport has been to war, Lucretia remembers. He’s seen this kind of thing before.

“We need to go back,” Magnus says, after a moment. “If Bisolis isn’t answering, then we should —”

Davenport holds up a hand to cut him off. “We _need_ to speak with Faerun,” he says. “They’re expecting us. If comms on Bisolis are down, there could be several reasons — not the least of which is an enemy attack. As far as we know, we’re the only early warning system the rest of the Alliance has.”

“Barry said we were supposed to launch later in the day, originally,” Lup says, glancing over at Barry. “Didn’t you, babe?”

“Uh, yeah,” Barry says. “They moved us to an earlier slot since I, uh, helped them out with station repairs and ran a check-up on their A.I.”

“So we were supposed to go down with the station,” Davenport says. “That makes sense. No survivors. Whoever did this must not have known about the schedule change.”

“Bisolis is an entire _planet_ ,” Magnus says. “Captain, you can’t think — there are people there we could _help_.”

“We’ll help more people if we don’t rush into a situation we’re not fully prepared for, Magnus,” Davenport says, shaking his head. “As our security officer, you should appreciate the importance of keeping the ship and its crew intact. And the importance of the Alliance’s security as a whole.”

That quiets Magnus for the moment, although it’s obvious from his expression that he doesn’t like Davenport’s logic.

“What do you suggest we do, Captain?” Lucretia asks. “We have the long distance commlink. We can call Faerun to —”

Davenport is already shaking his head. “They need as much information as possible,” he says. “That includes the recording. We can’t broadcast that over civilian lines. I don’t care _how_ low the probability of the signal being listened in on is.” He gives Merle a pointed look. “It’s too sensitive. Taako — how far are we from the nearest port?”

Taako’s ears twitch and he looks at his station, pulling up the holodisplay. Lucretia watches him type something into the system and then a spinning projection of a rundown station sitting on an asteroid appears. “There’s a port on asteroid 4X-NM1. It’s less than a thousand klicks,” he says. “It’s, uh, not Alliance though.”

“Starlopers?” Davenport asks. Lucretia nearly does a double-take because Terran command would _definitely_ not have referred to non-affiliated ports as belonging to starlopers, even if it is technically true. The term is… not _offensive_ , but definitely slang.

Taako, too, seems to need a moment to recover from hearing his captain casually drop the word _starloper_ on them. “Uh — yeah, that’s — yep. Far as I can tell from the files we’ve got on it, it’s a free-for-all ‘lope kinda place.”

“Is that a good idea?” Barry asks. “The Starblaster is... _unusual_. We’re government. We’ll stand out. We’re painting a target on our back, Captain. That’s the kind of place pirates hang out.”

“Nothing wrong with ‘lopers if you stay on their good side,” Merle says, shrugging. “Just don’t get worked up when they start making fun of _you_ for being from a planet. Always kind of liked the thought, myself — living free from society, making your own rules. Not much in the way of dwarves on ‘loper crews though.”

“We don’t have to warp to get there and they’ll have a secure line we can use to hail Faerun,” Davenport points out. “We won’t wear our uniforms off of the ship. Barry, you said we can only use the warp once more before we need to run a diagnostic. We don’t know where we should head yet. This is our best option. We talk to Faerun and we report what we saw. IPAS’s last command was to tell the Alliance what happened. We’re going to complete that order and then Faerun will tell us whether they want us to investigate Bisolis or continue on to them for further instructions. The Starblaster is the fastest short-distance ship in the Planar Galaxy. We can outrun any trouble we run into.”

Lucretia doesn’t find the skeptical look on their engineering officer’s face very reassuring, but she’s trying to remember that he has semi-regular panic attacks. It’s his job to worry about system failure.

“So we keep going?” she asks. “To 4X-NM1?”

Davenport looks at her, then at his crew. _Their_ crew, Lucretia reminds herself. She’s second in command here. She needs to help her captain take charge in situations like these. She looks at the rest of the crew and sees their uncertainty written all over their faces. Taako and Lup are holding hands, which means they’re talking to each other. Barry’s just — Barry. Magnus still obviously doesn’t think they should be heading away from Bisolis. He might be keeping his thoughts to himself, but every inch of him radiates a need to be _active_ , to do _something_ other than stand around on the ship. Merle’s the only one who looks untroubled, and that might just be Lucretia not yet knowing how to read dwarven expressions. His beard obscures the lower half of his face. She turns back to her captain. She trusts him. She trusts the team he put together, no matter how frayed around the edges this all feels right now.

“Yes,” Davenport says. “Taako, set the course. We keep going.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

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> 
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**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! We are _so excited_ to kick this series off with a, uh, bang. If you enjoyed, please leave a comment and kudos.
> 
> We have lots more planned. Watch this space! (Get it? Space?) 
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